Jan 15th, 2009 by cm1
Dream (or Bi-mong, as is the Korean title) is already Ki-duk’s 15th film. It’s also the 15th Ki-duk film I watched so obviously you can consider me a fan. Ki-duk is a director who’s known to stay pretty close to what he does best, so even though the differences between Dream and his earlier films might not seem stellar, they do present a big deviation for Ki-duk standards. Yet in the end, Dream is still 100% Ki-duk and couldn’t have been made by any other.
Central to Dream is the casting of Jo Odagiri, Japanese acting talent who’s often considered to be Tadanobu Asano’s professional twin (and rightfully so). Odagiri is known for his interesting choices in film and his foreign appeal. Even their looks seem to match from time to time. Odagiri plays a large part in Ki-duk’s latest and marks Ki-duk’s first big deviation. It’s the first time a foreign film star takes the center stage in one of his films.
Probably even bolder is the fact that Odagiri is allowed to speak Japanese throughout the whole of the film. There is no language barrier for the characters, which is a pretty rare choice to make. Even though it is never specified whether Odagiri plays a Japanese or Korean character, the way Japanese and Korean are mixed is very unnatural. Still, after a few minutes of getting used to it only works in favor of the film as Odagiri can focus on acting rather than struggle with a foreign language.
Ki-duk’s second departure from his signature style is the amount of dialog featured in the film. Not exactly the first time he allows his characters to communicate verbally (cfr Time – Shi Gan), but it still feels very un-Ki-duk-like. On the other hand, it fits the film well and Ki-duk does a much better job of handling the dialog than he did with Time. And even though there might be more dialog to Ki-duk standards, there are still pretty long stretches were characters do little more than grunt and act, especially near the end of the film.
Apart from these two deviations, all crucial Ki-duk elements are still very much in place. There are the strong key performances, very troubled and somewhat enigmatic characters, a touch of magic and at the end there is hope, tragic as the events might have been. And in between all that there is enough confusion and symbolism to keep people who like to puzzle more than satisfied.
Download Dream 2008 part 1:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347691/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part1.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 2:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347581/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part2.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 3:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347686/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part3.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 4:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347679/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part4.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 5:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347589/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part5.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 6:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347730/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part6.rar.htm
Download Dream 2008 part 7:
http://rapidshare.com/files/183347607/Dream.2008.DVDRip.XviD-BiFOS.part7.rar.htm
